The Slowcook at Spydog Farm The Slowcook at Spydog Farm

Spring is in the Air

March 19th, 2017 · 2 Comments · Posted in Blog

IMG_1353

I attended a memorial service over the weekend in Annapolis for my recently deceased father-in-law, Dave Green, and was besieged by fans of the Slow Cook all asking the same question: “When are you going to start writing again”? This was a first for me. I even met one friend of my father-in-law who said that whenever a new blog post was published he would get a call from Dave wanting to talk about it.

Of course I felt guilty and did a lot of soul searching on the way back to the farm. For years I had been writing almost daily on The Slow Cook and now weeks and months passed without a peep. Why? Well, the excuse I had most ready–that my phone didn’t work any more so it wasn’t nearly as convenient taking photos–didn’t seem to impress anyone. Truth is, I think I’ve been in a bit of a funk where writing is concerned. A sense of apprehension–dread, even–has been crowding out the excitement I felt when the farm was new.

The average age of a U.S. farmer these days is 59. I turn 65 this year. Will I really spend the rest of my days fighting the weeds that grow along our mile-long stretch of electric perimeter fencing? Or lugging water buckets through the snow? Or manhandling 100-pound bags of feed? Or stacking truckloads of firewood?

Our original plan was to find a young, farm-eager couple to live on the farm in our dotage and do the heavy lifting. Now I’m not so sure the risk-reward equation actually works.

But it’s more than that. My wife is a Type I diabetic and health insurance threatened to bust our budget before we moved here from D.C. Then the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) kicked in and suddenly a heavy weight lifted. Since the most recent election, however, we live under a cloud again. If our current insurance disappears, I don’t know if we’ll be able to afford the alternative, especially at a time when we have a daughter to put  through college.

My wife has talked about going without health insurance; about traveling to Canada for her insulin; about declining treatment in the event she gets really sick so as not to bankrupt us.

Suddenly, writing about the farm doesn’t seem so urgent any more.

But meeting so many of my readers was a fresh dose of reality–a kick in the butt, if you will. Maybe I need to get outside my head a little. And it’s not like there’s nothing going on here. We thought we’d see an early spring. Instead we got a blizzard that dumped 15 inches of snow. Our Jersey cow Emily should be calving soon. Baby lambs and kids will follow. We’re less than a month from the season’s first shipment of broiler chicks. And we still have work to do to keep those foxes away from our laying hens.

In other words, stay tuned….

Leave a Comment

Please note: Your comment may have to wait for approval to be published to ensure that we don't accidentally publish "spam". We thank you for understanding.

*

  • Maria

    Dear Ed, thank you for writing again. I missed you. Not that this lifts any of your current burdens though. I live in a country where almost free health care is my birthright so to speak, so I cannot understand how a nation as big as the USA cannot figure out a collective way of insuring ALL get help when they need it most… On the other hand, I always look into american sites and blogs to help me understand and improve my health – there are a lot of top notch resources and there is some reversing of type I situations happening with unconventional treatment. I dare not suggest any, as each person has preferences, but please search online, the right answer for your family will come up ( in other words, go online and have Faith 🙂 ). Warmest regards.

  • Ed Bruske

    Thanks for the kind words, Maria